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vv. 711–736.

A song changed and full of pity,

With the cry of a lost nation;

And she changed the bridegroom's name:

Called him Paris Ghastly-wed;

For her sons were with the dead,

And her life one lamentation,

'Mid blood and burning flame.

Lo, once there was a herdsman reared

In his own house, so stories tell,

A lion's whelp, a milk-fed thing

And soft in life's first opening

Among the sucklings of the herd;

The happy children loved him well,

And old men smiled, and oft, they say,

In men's arms, like a babe, he lay,

Bright-eyed, and toward the hand that teased him

Eagerly fawning for food or play.

Then on a day outflashed the sudden

Rage of the lion brood of yore;

He paid his debt to them that fed

With wrack of herds and carnage red,

Yea, wrought him a great feast unbidden,

Till all the house-ways ran with gore;

A sight the thralls fled weeping from,

A great red slayer, beard a-foam,

High-priest of some blood-cursèd altar

God had uplifted against that home.